How to Set Up Software QA Process From Scratch

QA is often the commonly overlooked part of digital product development. According to the QA Lead, 35% of companies hire or use non-testers for software testing. But what if things go south and the software glitches? It is the QA team’s responsibility to solve these issues.

Yet, for many businesses, QA is a hard to grasp process. Software Quality Assurance (SQA) involves not only software testing at the very end but encompasses the entire development process.

The task is to establish, monitor, and improve processes, standards, and procedures. Another part is ensuring that any development problems are detected and dealt with swiftly. QA is not about taking care of bugs and fixes when your software is ready. Its main task is to prevent such negative issues from happening at the end of the process.

Indeed, if we take QA in a vacuum, it seems insignificant. QA’s relevance can be seen only in context. Your mission as a business is to create value for both shareholders and customers and outperform the competitors. To do just that, you need to be able to maintain and constantly provide quality software offerings. 

If your developers have a clear focus on quality and are confident in their releases – QA becomes a critical resource for success. In this post we will share our experience of the SQA based on our more than seven years of successful software development solutions, such as Real Estate Association, Events10x and Locum app.

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Why Should a Software QA Process Be Implemented

First, you need a software quality assurance process to create a quality product. Thank you, Captain Obvious! However, how exactly is this possible?

Testers will monitor the creation of your software from the beginning. This way, they will influence development decisions and even detect bugs in advance. QA specialists can also offer efficient solutions for the development of your product at all stages.

As a result, it is significant to start the QA process simultaneously with software development.

For less obvious reasons, the role of software testing is to reduce development costs. But, if you hire an entire team of QA experts, how can you cut costs? The salary of such employees is undoubtedly justified. They will help you detect product defects early when these bugs are still affordable to fix.

Most Common Issues in Software Testing Process

Forewarned is forearmed. So if you are planning to run a QA process for software in your company, be ready for potential challenges. Here are some of the issues you may encounter:

Testing Not Integrated into the Development Process

Separating QA specialists from software engineers is barely a good idea. When it comes to planning your product development, some misunderstandings and problems may occur.

Incorrectly Selected Testing Tools

There are many tools for efficient software testing. But are they tailored to your project and your team? You should consider this and select the best tools for QA.

Faulty Testing Estimation

QA specialists are not immune to mistakes in the same way developers are. Even the most accurate testing estimation might lead to unexpected complications.

Vaguely Defined Quality Standards

Only when your product’s standards are clearly stated will it be of true quality. The testing procedure will be challenging if you haven’t done this in advance.

Unstable Environment

An unstable environment is another critical issue for QA professionals. Such an environment is poorly managed and can lead to delays in the schedule. In the long run, it can negatively affect the overall quality of your product.

Stages of QA Process in Software Development

At this point, you already clearly understand why your software may need testing. You are also ready for potential difficulties. This part of our article will tell you more about the QA process stages. There are a few basic steps:

Step 1. Analyzing Software Requirements

Your QA professionals will identify the software’s functional and nonfunctional requirements at this stage. It helps in determining the project’s scope. Testers can also look through product specifications and designs if you already have them. 

This step should provide you and your QA team with a clear understanding of product requirements, ways to fix bugs, and methods to improve your software.

Step 2. Planning Tests

After analyzing the requirements, your QA team creates a test plan in this step. You and your developers are also involved in this process. A test plan is a document that defines the whole software testing life cycle: the scope, schedule, environment, objectives, and expected results of testing, including the resources required.

According to the QA Lead, 35% of companies hire or use non-testers for software testing.

Step 3. Designing a Test Case or Checklist

Now, your QA team understands all the requirements and scope of work. Specialists can proceed directly to designing test cases or checklists. Let’s find out what these terms mean.

A test case describes the test input, test instructions, and expected results. Each test case aims to assess a specific functionality of your software. Thus, a tester performs the necessary steps to check this feature and verifies if it meets the end user’s requirements.

A checklist is a simplified version of test cases. It contains scenarios of possible actions that users can perform with the specific functionality of your product. Creating and completing checklists takes less time for your team.

What to choose: a test case or a checklist? Test cases are better suited for large-scale projects with sizable teams. Checklists are ideal for smaller projects with compact teams.

Step 4. Running Test Cases or Completing Checklists

Your QA specialists already have prepared test cases or checklists in this step. Here, your team begins to test the functionality of your software at the UI and API level.

If a tester finds any defect in your product, they should provide detailed information about it in the defect tracking system. Namely, a QA expert specifies the conditions and actions under which the bug occurs. Then, based on this information, your developers will be able to fix all these errors.

Step 5. Retesting Fixed Bugs and Running Regression Testing

After your software engineers deal with the bugs, QA specialists retest all the bugs that have been fixed. It is necessary to make sure that your software is running smoothly.

In this step, QA specialists also perform regression testing. It makes sure that recently corrected errors do not cause new ones.

Step 6. Reporting

Your QA team should provide test reports after each iteration of the development. This report should include a list of all tests performed and their results. Regular reports are of great value to you. They allow you to manage a team of QA experts and their work while understanding the current state of your software. Also, quite often there is a need for user acceptance testing (UAT), which is also an integral part of this process.

How Is the Application Testing Process Different?

The mobile app is a unique type of software. Accordingly, testing an application will be different from the QA process for software. What are its peculiarities?

First of all, a decent user experience in mobile applications is one of the main advantages of such products. Therefore, it will be necessary to put in a lot of effort to make things work. 

Here are other distinctions of testing mobile apps:

• Checking compatibility with various devices. Here, testers should check that your application is compatible with all versions of operating systems and the device’s screen resolution.
• Installation and uninstallation testing. Your QA specialists need to ensure that your app can be easily installed and uninstalled on all supporting devices.
• Network testing. It is necessary to ensure that your application works productively on various networks, such as 4G, 3G, Wi-Fi, and edge.
• Memory testing. Here, your testers check your program’s RAM usage and memory leaks.

The Types of Software Testing

There are many QA methodologies, including usability, compatibility, and performance testing. We have mentioned only a few approaches out of many. In general, testing can be divided into two broad categories: manual and automated.

Your team will work better if you determine which tests to perform manually and which should be automated. Your QA specialists will save time and effort on testing by making this distribution.

Let’s talk about these two major categories.

According to Statista, a quarter of the IT budget should be allocated to QA testing. It’s that important.

Manual Testing

Manual testing is a type of software testing in which QA experts perform tests one after another. During such testing, a specialist manually checks the product’s functionality without special tools that evaluate the software quality.

For example, you can manually perform the following tests:

• Usability testing. It checks how easy it is to use your product from the end user’s point of view.
• Compatibility testing. Thanks to it, QA specialists determine how well your software works on different devices, platforms, or browsers.
• Performance testing. It allows you to determine whether your software can withstand heavy loads.

Automated Testing

One of the other software testing methods is automated testing. In it, QA experts use special tools and scripts to automate software quality testing.

Thanks to the tools, automated testing surpasses manual in terms of time. Through automation, testers can perform more tests, increase testing accuracy, and expand testing coverage.

You can perform the following automated tests:

• Functional testing. It allows you to test every product’s feature and compare the results with the requirements.
• Regression testing. This method allows QA specialists to ensure that new features do not cause new errors and do not damage your software.

Recommended QA Testing Tools

Want to improve the quality of software testing? Then it would help if you chose the right tools for this.

First of all, let’s note that in the case of both automated and manual testing, you need to take care of one important thing. It is testing on real devices. Your product will not be successful if you do not test its performance in real user conditions.

Although, it’s not a problem when you do not have access to various devices. Your team can use the cloud infrastructure.

Now, let’s talk about tools in more detail. Here are the ones that significantly improve the process of software testing.

• Google Docs. Here your team can save documents for your project. These may include test cases, checklists, and other data needed for testing.
• Jira. It is software that allows your specialists to track errors, receive tickets for tasks, and more.
• Zeplin. It is an environment that brings together your entire team: designers, developers, and QA experts. Thus, all specialists will be aware of the latest changes in the project.

As we have stated before, using specific tools is more relevant for automated testing. The main ones include:

• Selenium and Cypress. Your QA specialists can use them for automated website testing.
• Appium. This software is suitable for automated application testing.

PractiTest states that a team of up to 5 QA specialists in a mid-size company can effectively execute quality assurance tasks.

How to Find a Team of Software Testing Professionals

We talked about the QA process in software testing a lot. But where to find specialists who can perform such work – and do it efficiently? And how do you know if the experts you’ve found are right for you? Let’s figure this out.

First of all, you need to decide exactly how to search for the ideal candidates. Options are plentiful: popular job search websites, freelance platforms, social networks, or simply through acquaintances.

Here are some popular platforms on which you can find a specialist in software testing activities.

• Indeed, ZipRecruiter, or Glassdoor Jobs. These are popular job search engines on which you can place a vacancy.
• LinkedIn. It is a social network for finding and establishing business contacts. You will be able to get acquainted with the candidates in detail there.
• Fiverr or Upwork. These are platforms for freelancers. So, if you need remote QA specialists, you can look for them there.

It’s now more or less clear where to seek QA specialists. But how can you know which candidate is the best fit for you? Take note of the following factors:

• Does your candidate have a university degree in technology or a related field?
• How many years of experience in the same or a similar position does your candidate have?
• Does your candidate have Quality Assurance certificates?
• Does your candidate know the tools, methodologies, and concepts of QA?
• Does your candidate know relevant regulatory standards?
• Did your candidate work directly in your or related niches?

These questions will help you decide on hiring a particular QA specialist.

However, finding a decent QA expert can be a time-consuming process. Posting vacancies, conducting interviews, and checking test tasks requires your efforts. Let us offer you a simpler solution – the services of our specialists.

Read on to learn more about our experience testing in software development.

Our Experience in Software Testing Services

Softermii’s QA team applies advanced principles of software testing. In this way, we help our customers solve critical software problems and save up to 60% on product launch costs.

By contacting us, you receive a guarantee that your product will meet all requirements and expectations. In particular, our company opens the following opportunities:

• Testing web and mobile applications
• Manual and automated testing
• Large team
• Several models of hiring
• Quick start

Here are three of our recent cases that have been successful thanks to the productive collaboration of our QA specialists with developers and designers.

Events10x

One of the successful examples where our team used QA during the development process is Events10x – an online and hybrid events service provider. It allows organizing conferences & exhibitions with private and group networking. It is delivered through video calls, messaging, broadcasting to over 15000 people, and doing it all simultaneously.

The virtual expo software solution development was dedicated to the launch of a huge international online event. Even though we had very tight deadlines, our team aced the whole process and provided the client with a working solution. We're proud to hold an award from the UAE Ministry of Economy for developing the Events10X solution. The ministry could bring over 16,000 local and international attendees online during the pandemic.

Locum App

The Locum App is a staffing platform for pharmacies and pharmacists. Widely used in the pharma industry, this app streamlines and automates the recruiting process in the UK pharmaceutical market.

Our team was challenged by the complex recruiting process on the UK market: the pharmacies face a problem finding the pharmacists who meet their needs, and the pharmacists have problems finding a job. Our development team was faced with the challenge of building an online application that should solve the needs of both parties and serve as an online medium for simplifying the process of recruitment.

Development of the application works effectively for both parties with two separate user flows. The application has a different admin panel depending on the flow, in-app messaging, custom notifications sent when the job is posted, and job sharing features — out of the app.

Real Estate Association

The French Real Estate Association approached us to develop a mobile app used by realtors that can provide real-time information about the properties available for purchase or rental. We started with market research and business analysis to define the key features and tools that a platform should comprise. Later, we moved to UI/UX design and coding. After the successful launch of the product, we keep providing maintenance services for the company.

For the French Real Estate Association, we developed a mobile iOS application that allows interaction between agents and clients. It helps to improve customer satisfaction and increase the number of successful transactions.

We introduced the following features to the product:

• real-time visibility of the market section with the option to geolocate and filter searches to identify properties that meet customer requirements
• detailed descriptions of property added to the platform
• real-time comparison tool
• collaborations between agents and agencies
• custom zones option
• notifications

Currently, over 3,900 agencies are using the software. Also, the solution achieved MobileWebAwards Best Real Estate Mobile Application for the 2020 award.

Summary

Software quality management is far from glamorous work, but having a well-established testing strategy with a dedicated partner will lead your product to success. It is how you can monitor the development process and catch bugs early on. Thus, QA services will save your money and time.

With the support of the QA team, you will bring your product to the top. But how do you find such specialists? The answer is simple: by consulting with Softermii experts. Our QA specialists can assist you with both manual and automated testing services. Softermii professionals also have experience testing various software, including web and mobile apps.

Ensuring a product’s viability is probably the most vital aspect of the development process. And we know how to develop a product that will pull the market and won’t fail.